1
The dark side of Gay Pride Days in San Francisco are the secret tales of predators and the like who come into The City to hurt innocents or to do worse. Local Media rarely delves into the street crimes or police reports of injured or dead adults who invited a pleasant stranger into their home expecting fun, not anything else. Predators are with us always and the hard part is to admit that the good ones are beautiful to look at. Serious psychopath work at their trade and are most interesting to watch.
San Francisco is the last stop for all kinds of desperate not all Gay. The City offers the ultimate cruelty as those who have made it treat the new comers like dirt. Rents are absurd and much of the housing stock is old, exhausted, and not safe should the earth move.
I love the city as a dear friend but I have no illusions. I know all too well the deceptions and dangerous games played here.
Herb Caen spoke of the wonder and thrills and on occasion the despair and defeats. Any wonder why over 2000 have jumped of the Golden Gate Bridge?
2
The handover in Iraq is complete and the Bush Administration deserves honest praise. I hope that it works and Iraq can start the tough task of getting away from American predators and create a life of its own.
More later
David
Crellin@Audiea.com
God awaits us in the kitchen of imagination
Tuesday, June 29, 2004
1
The US Supreme Court decision on Monday 28 June that the detainees at Camp X Ray have the right of access to council as well as legal status in US courts, brings to an end the Bush Administrations effort to grant US Presidents executive largesse in dealing with foreign combatants without recourse by Congress or the persons involved. The Imperial presidency lasted less than three years.
I believe this court has a growing dislike for all things Bush Cheney and I believe that over the next year or so, Rehnquist and company will rebuke Bush/Cheney again and again.
The jurists on the high court are serious folk, having earned everything they have. They thought they were installing a tradional Republican president in 2000, they were fooled.
Bush Cheney are hardcore ideolog's and you can be certain they do not reflect the values and faith in an independent judiciary!
The Bush Administration has put the shame to honest conservatives.
The cynical hustle of 9/11, the Callus misuse of federal regulatory agencies as well as a genuine contempt for everyone except friends in Texas, well, the court will have it's day and GW Bush will rue ever insulting this bunch with cracker judges like Mr. Pickering, and others.
More later
David
Crellin@Audiea.com
The US Supreme Court decision on Monday 28 June that the detainees at Camp X Ray have the right of access to council as well as legal status in US courts, brings to an end the Bush Administrations effort to grant US Presidents executive largesse in dealing with foreign combatants without recourse by Congress or the persons involved. The Imperial presidency lasted less than three years.
I believe this court has a growing dislike for all things Bush Cheney and I believe that over the next year or so, Rehnquist and company will rebuke Bush/Cheney again and again.
The jurists on the high court are serious folk, having earned everything they have. They thought they were installing a tradional Republican president in 2000, they were fooled.
Bush Cheney are hardcore ideolog's and you can be certain they do not reflect the values and faith in an independent judiciary!
The Bush Administration has put the shame to honest conservatives.
The cynical hustle of 9/11, the Callus misuse of federal regulatory agencies as well as a genuine contempt for everyone except friends in Texas, well, the court will have it's day and GW Bush will rue ever insulting this bunch with cracker judges like Mr. Pickering, and others.
More later
David
Crellin@Audiea.com
Wednesday, June 23, 2004
1
6.23.04
The death of Kim Il, the Korean translator at the hands of the Iraqi thugs solves nothing and only ads to the misury of the Iraqi's.
Here is an unauthorized bit from todays column by Andrew Sullivan.
REAGAN'S HUMOR: Here's a classic from a wonderful essay by Edmund Morris in the new New Yorker:
Perhaps the best of Reagan’s one-liners came after he attended his last ceremonial dinner, with the Knights of Malta in New York City on January 13, 1989. The evening's m.c., a prominent lay Catholic, was rendered so emotional by wine that he waved aside protocol and followed the President’s speech with a rather slurry one of his own. It was to the effect that Ronald Reagan, a defender of the rights of the unborn, knew that all human beings begin life as "feces." The speaker cited Cardinal John O’Connor (sitting aghast nearby) as "a fece" who had gone on to greater things. "You, too, Mr. President — you were once a fece!"
En route back to Washington on Air Force One, Reagan twinklingly joined his aides in the main cabin. "Well," he said, "that's the first time I've flown to New York in formal attire to be told I was a piece of shit."
6.23.04
The death of Kim Il, the Korean translator at the hands of the Iraqi thugs solves nothing and only ads to the misury of the Iraqi's.
Here is an unauthorized bit from todays column by Andrew Sullivan.
REAGAN'S HUMOR: Here's a classic from a wonderful essay by Edmund Morris in the new New Yorker:
Perhaps the best of Reagan’s one-liners came after he attended his last ceremonial dinner, with the Knights of Malta in New York City on January 13, 1989. The evening's m.c., a prominent lay Catholic, was rendered so emotional by wine that he waved aside protocol and followed the President’s speech with a rather slurry one of his own. It was to the effect that Ronald Reagan, a defender of the rights of the unborn, knew that all human beings begin life as "feces." The speaker cited Cardinal John O’Connor (sitting aghast nearby) as "a fece" who had gone on to greater things. "You, too, Mr. President — you were once a fece!"
En route back to Washington on Air Force One, Reagan twinklingly joined his aides in the main cabin. "Well," he said, "that's the first time I've flown to New York in formal attire to be told I was a piece of shit."
Friday, June 11, 2004
1
Ronald Reagan is dead.
Here is a unauthorized reprint from Andrew Sullivan.
WHAT THEY SAID: In honor of president Reagan's funeral, here's a useful corrective to the notion that his legacy was always celebrated. Today, almost everyone concedes his historical significance. But that wasn't what was said at the time. Here's a smattering of commentary from the 1980s.
"A few years from now, I believe, Reaganism will seem a weird and improbable memory, a strange interlude of national hallucination, rather as the McCarthyism of the early 1950s and the youth rebellion of the late 1960s appear to us today." - Arthur "Always Wrong" Schlesinger, Washington Post, May 1, 1988.
"I wonder how many people, reading about the [Evil Empire'] speech or seeing bits on television, really noticed its outrageous character… Primitive: that is the only word for it. … What is the world to think when the greatest of powers is led by a man who applies to the most difficult human problem a simplistic theology – one in fact rejected by most theologians?... What must the leaders of Western Europe think of such a speech? They look to the head of the alliance for rhetoric that can persuade them and their constituents. What they get from Ronald Reagan is a mirror image of crude Soviet rhetoric. And it is more than rhetoric: everyone must sense that. The real Ronald Reagan was speaking in Orlando. The exaggeration and the simplicities are there not only in the rhetoric but in the process by which he makes decisions." - Anthony Lewis, New York Times, March 10, 1983
"Something like the speech to the evangelicals is not presidential, it's not something a president should say. If the Russians are infinitely evil and we are infinitely good, then the logical first step is a nuclear first strike. Words like that frighten the American public and antagonize the Soviets. What good is that?" - Rick Hertzberg, New Yorker macher, quoted in the Washington Post, March 29, 1983.
"President Reagan has substituted a mindless militarism for a foreign policy, rattling arms from El Salvador to Saudi Arabia, frightening our friends from Japan to West Germany. He proposes a 50 percent increase in ‘defense expenditures.’ Much of it will be dissipated in the self-defeating spiral of an open-ended nuclear-arms race that poses a greater threat to our own internal and external security than all the Communist propaganda that ever emanated from Moscow. Already, the cost of Reagan policies is devastating to our country in economic strength, in diplomatic influence, in national security, in moral stature." -- John B. Oakes, former senior editor, New York Times, November 1, 1981.
"All evidence indicates that the Reagan administration has abandoned both containment and détente for a very different objective: destroying the Soviet Union as a world power and possibly even its Communist system. [This is a] potentially fatal form of Sovietphobia… a pathological rather than a healthy response to the Soviet Union." — Princeton Professor Stephen Cohen, 1983.
"'We've really got to start talking,' says George Ball, undersecretary of state in the Kennedy and Johnson administrations. 'The fact is we've let these fellows get away with murder, and the situation now is much too serious for that.' To ideological men like Ronald Reagan, new information is only useful if it confirms old prejudices. Though he is shrewd enough to bend and budge under pressure (hence, for example, his abandonment of old positions on Taiwan), in his heart Reagan knows he has always been right about the nature of the world, of communism, of America's proper role." - Robert Kaiser, Washington Post, October 30, 1983.
"Are we rushing headlong into the next step of those 40 years of progressions by which we do something then they do something, by which we pretend that we're going to build this and it will somehow strengthen our deterrent then they do it, and low and behold, the next thing we know is, the President of the United States is addressing the nation saying, ‘My fellow Americans, I hate to tell you this, but the Soviet Union is deploying more of these, and we have to respond, and I'm asking the Congress for more money in order to respond.’ Star Wars is guaranteed to do that, and it's guaranteed to threaten the heavens -- the one line we haven't yet crossed with weaponry: the heavens." – Senator John Kerry, on SDI, the program that brought the evil empire to its knees, August 5, 1986.
"In his distaste for bilateral efforts to manage the superpower rivalry and his instinctive predilection for unilateral ones, Reagan is counting on American technological and economic predominance to prevail in the end. The most striking, and questionable, theme in his star wars speech was his apparent belief that the U.S. could mobilize its scientific community and its economic resources in quest of an impenetrable antiballistic-missile shield over the entire nation without triggering perilously destabilizing countermeasures, both offensive and defensive, on the part of the U.S.S.R. Reagan's views notwithstanding, there is little reason to hope that the many handicaps of the Soviet economy will be decisively advantageous to the U.S. in the long run, allowing the U.S. to ‘beat’ the U.S.S.R. in an arms race." -- Strobe Talbott, Time, April 18, 1983.
"Ronald Reagan came to Europe to persuade people that he is not the shallow, nuclear cowboy of certain unkind assessments. Said White House spokesman David Gergen, on the eve of departure, ‘Some in Europe do not know or understand him.’ But now that the president has been among them for over a week, Europeans may think they got him right the first time. In Rome, he made a stab at identifying himself as a ‘pilgrim for peace.’ But by the time he got to London he had reverted to type as a cold warrior. And yesterday in Bonn, he reiterated his commitment to ‘peace through strength’ – which is fancy talk for continuing the nuclear arms race." - Mary McGrory, Washington Post, June 10, 1982.
Rest in peace, Mr President. And know that after all these years, you were right - and all these people were clearly, emphatically, embarrassingly, wrong.
Andrew Sullivan
David A Fairbanks
Crellin@Audiea.com
Ronald Reagan is dead.
Here is a unauthorized reprint from Andrew Sullivan.
WHAT THEY SAID: In honor of president Reagan's funeral, here's a useful corrective to the notion that his legacy was always celebrated. Today, almost everyone concedes his historical significance. But that wasn't what was said at the time. Here's a smattering of commentary from the 1980s.
"A few years from now, I believe, Reaganism will seem a weird and improbable memory, a strange interlude of national hallucination, rather as the McCarthyism of the early 1950s and the youth rebellion of the late 1960s appear to us today." - Arthur "Always Wrong" Schlesinger, Washington Post, May 1, 1988.
"I wonder how many people, reading about the [Evil Empire'] speech or seeing bits on television, really noticed its outrageous character… Primitive: that is the only word for it. … What is the world to think when the greatest of powers is led by a man who applies to the most difficult human problem a simplistic theology – one in fact rejected by most theologians?... What must the leaders of Western Europe think of such a speech? They look to the head of the alliance for rhetoric that can persuade them and their constituents. What they get from Ronald Reagan is a mirror image of crude Soviet rhetoric. And it is more than rhetoric: everyone must sense that. The real Ronald Reagan was speaking in Orlando. The exaggeration and the simplicities are there not only in the rhetoric but in the process by which he makes decisions." - Anthony Lewis, New York Times, March 10, 1983
"Something like the speech to the evangelicals is not presidential, it's not something a president should say. If the Russians are infinitely evil and we are infinitely good, then the logical first step is a nuclear first strike. Words like that frighten the American public and antagonize the Soviets. What good is that?" - Rick Hertzberg, New Yorker macher, quoted in the Washington Post, March 29, 1983.
"President Reagan has substituted a mindless militarism for a foreign policy, rattling arms from El Salvador to Saudi Arabia, frightening our friends from Japan to West Germany. He proposes a 50 percent increase in ‘defense expenditures.’ Much of it will be dissipated in the self-defeating spiral of an open-ended nuclear-arms race that poses a greater threat to our own internal and external security than all the Communist propaganda that ever emanated from Moscow. Already, the cost of Reagan policies is devastating to our country in economic strength, in diplomatic influence, in national security, in moral stature." -- John B. Oakes, former senior editor, New York Times, November 1, 1981.
"All evidence indicates that the Reagan administration has abandoned both containment and détente for a very different objective: destroying the Soviet Union as a world power and possibly even its Communist system. [This is a] potentially fatal form of Sovietphobia… a pathological rather than a healthy response to the Soviet Union." — Princeton Professor Stephen Cohen, 1983.
"'We've really got to start talking,' says George Ball, undersecretary of state in the Kennedy and Johnson administrations. 'The fact is we've let these fellows get away with murder, and the situation now is much too serious for that.' To ideological men like Ronald Reagan, new information is only useful if it confirms old prejudices. Though he is shrewd enough to bend and budge under pressure (hence, for example, his abandonment of old positions on Taiwan), in his heart Reagan knows he has always been right about the nature of the world, of communism, of America's proper role." - Robert Kaiser, Washington Post, October 30, 1983.
"Are we rushing headlong into the next step of those 40 years of progressions by which we do something then they do something, by which we pretend that we're going to build this and it will somehow strengthen our deterrent then they do it, and low and behold, the next thing we know is, the President of the United States is addressing the nation saying, ‘My fellow Americans, I hate to tell you this, but the Soviet Union is deploying more of these, and we have to respond, and I'm asking the Congress for more money in order to respond.’ Star Wars is guaranteed to do that, and it's guaranteed to threaten the heavens -- the one line we haven't yet crossed with weaponry: the heavens." – Senator John Kerry, on SDI, the program that brought the evil empire to its knees, August 5, 1986.
"In his distaste for bilateral efforts to manage the superpower rivalry and his instinctive predilection for unilateral ones, Reagan is counting on American technological and economic predominance to prevail in the end. The most striking, and questionable, theme in his star wars speech was his apparent belief that the U.S. could mobilize its scientific community and its economic resources in quest of an impenetrable antiballistic-missile shield over the entire nation without triggering perilously destabilizing countermeasures, both offensive and defensive, on the part of the U.S.S.R. Reagan's views notwithstanding, there is little reason to hope that the many handicaps of the Soviet economy will be decisively advantageous to the U.S. in the long run, allowing the U.S. to ‘beat’ the U.S.S.R. in an arms race." -- Strobe Talbott, Time, April 18, 1983.
"Ronald Reagan came to Europe to persuade people that he is not the shallow, nuclear cowboy of certain unkind assessments. Said White House spokesman David Gergen, on the eve of departure, ‘Some in Europe do not know or understand him.’ But now that the president has been among them for over a week, Europeans may think they got him right the first time. In Rome, he made a stab at identifying himself as a ‘pilgrim for peace.’ But by the time he got to London he had reverted to type as a cold warrior. And yesterday in Bonn, he reiterated his commitment to ‘peace through strength’ – which is fancy talk for continuing the nuclear arms race." - Mary McGrory, Washington Post, June 10, 1982.
Rest in peace, Mr President. And know that after all these years, you were right - and all these people were clearly, emphatically, embarrassingly, wrong.
Andrew Sullivan
David A Fairbanks
Crellin@Audiea.com
Tuesday, June 01, 2004
1
Think of all the men and woman who entered military reserve to serve the country and get unaffordable benefits. They get sent to Iraq for a bit of adventure and end up being there well past a year, and finally they are surrounded by a sullen population and a petty squabbling "Ruling Council" that is in fact a powerless window dressing!
Imagine the despair of wanting to do the right thing but know all of it is a pack of lies and pointless murder!
The Military has been massively abused by the Bush Administration. The cynical under manning of the needed troops in Iraq. The shoe string adventure in Afghanistan and the shameless abuse of veterans by cheap VA services and excuses to deny needed medicines by a stingy government!
All of us should be ashamed. The Armed Services deserve so much better!
I commend all Service personnel for their bravery and simple decency!
David
Crellin@Audiea.com
Think of all the men and woman who entered military reserve to serve the country and get unaffordable benefits. They get sent to Iraq for a bit of adventure and end up being there well past a year, and finally they are surrounded by a sullen population and a petty squabbling "Ruling Council" that is in fact a powerless window dressing!
Imagine the despair of wanting to do the right thing but know all of it is a pack of lies and pointless murder!
The Military has been massively abused by the Bush Administration. The cynical under manning of the needed troops in Iraq. The shoe string adventure in Afghanistan and the shameless abuse of veterans by cheap VA services and excuses to deny needed medicines by a stingy government!
All of us should be ashamed. The Armed Services deserve so much better!
I commend all Service personnel for their bravery and simple decency!
David
Crellin@Audiea.com
